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March 6, 2010

Life's Like That - March 7, 2010

By Jerry Bullock Daily Record Columnist The San Marcos Record Sat Mar 06, 2010, 01:10 PM CST

San Marcos — The Alamo is some 45 miles southwest of San Marcos. It is the most visited tourist attraction in the state. Yesterday was the anniversary of the final charge and the capture of the Alamo, March 6, 1836. The blood of heroes soaked up in the sand of the old mission. There were the cries of agony from the Anglos vowing victory or death and from the Mexican soldado who died crying, ”Viva Santa Ana.”

I first visited the Alamo when I was about eight years old and have been there many times since. I go whenever I can and take my visitors to see the shrine of Texas liberty. As I am a military historian by avocation it has an unending attraction to me. I have made a collection of battlefields I have visited and they number more than 100 sites from Thermopylae to Verdun and Gettysburg to Appomattox Courthouse. None affect me like the Alamo does. It is not a battlefield so much as it is a spirit place that comes to life for me when I enter its doors. I sit in the shade of the ancient tree in the courtyard and close my eyes and relive those tragic hours. I cannot put my feelings in words nearly so well as the hero of another war.

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, a Bowdoin college professor turned soldier and a teacher of rhetoric, put it so much better than I can. Years after the war on one of his many visits to the field at Gettysburg he wrote this:

“I sat there alone. On the storied crest, till the sun went down as it did before over the misty hills, and the darkness crept up the slopes, till from all earthly sight I was buried as with those before. But oh, what radiant companionship rose around, what steadfast ranks of power, what bearing of heroic souls. Oh, the glory that beamed through those nights and days. Unknown – but kept! The earth itself shall be its treasurer. It holds something of ours besides graves. These strange influences of material nature, its mountains and seas, its sunset skies and nights of stars, its colors and tones and odors, carry something of the mutual, reciprocal.

“And so these Gettysburg hills, which lifted up such splendid valor, and drank in such high heart’s blood, shall hold the mighty secret in their bosom till the great day of revelation and recompense, when these heights shall flame again with transfigured light –“

Most people had never heard of Chamberlain before the movie “Gettysburg” told the story of how his 20th Maine Infantry had successfully fought off wave after wave of Confederate soldiers attempting to dislodge him from his hold at Little Round Top. Most casual students probably have not followed his career in the years following the Civil War. At Petersburg he was severely wounded, actually given up for dead. He received the only field promotion to brigadier general given by General Grant. Grant thought he was promoting him posthumously.

He returned to duty and was soon promoted to major general. After the war ended he returned to Bowdoin College and served as president of the college. Later he was governor of Maine and teller of history of the war in which he fought so heroically. He was a truly great American and understood the spirit of a hard fought battle.

Remember the Alamo!

Jerry Bullock has written his weekly column for the Daily Record for more than 20 years. Jerry is a retired Air Force colonel, an ordained Baptist minister, professional counselor and military historian.

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